Incidentally...

Zoe did come down with a cold late Friday night--the standard mucous-y and miserable baby experience. She ran a fever today which broke early this evening, and was back to her happy talkative self tonight. Zoe did a good job of talking loudly over Hillary during the Scranton rally.

I dunno, but I think politics seemed to rile her up.

I was thinking about the timing of this cold she contracted. If there is any truth in the old saw about colds being "three days coming, three days here, three days going", and the cold really didn't get here until late Friday, I believe the pre-op appointment on Wednesday (or Monday, for that matter) may have been the culprit.

We spent hours there on those days. We sat on chairs and touched the arm rests. We ate in the lunch room and touched tables and chairs that others had been sitting on directly prior. We did not gel our hands or wash them every single time we went between touching some surface, and touching Zoe.

For all our fastidiousness up until her surgery (as friends who were not allowed to touch her at social settings can attest), we were not fastidious enough.

Won't make that mistake again.

We are doing okay, we're hunkered down--happy that, on the bright side of this experience, we get another month with our baby as we know her.

It seems like we're somewhat suspended in time--other babies her age have long been sitting up on their own, rolling over, and now even crawling. Zoe still does none of those things. She is very much like a precocious 4 month old: huggable, cuddleable and helpless like a small baby, and so alert and interactive on a social level.

She is her own unique little human.